Saturday, 20 July 2013

Little Market of Horrors

Even
though I’ve been in Guangzhou for two weeks now, since I have to work pretty
much all day, I barely had any time to properly look around. You can imagine
that, when I finally had a chance, I wanted to jump right into the deep water. Which
was way deeper than I’ve ever imagined…

Qingping Market – which translates to
Peaceful Market (in a bit, you too will see why this is a completely bizarre
choice of name) – is one of Guangzhou’s most notorious spots, and trust me on
this one - for a very good reason! The market is basically selling all sorts of…
wait for it… food. Well that’s not so bad now, is it? The only problem with
that is, the good people of China tend to consider as food pretty much anything
that is capable of dying – or at least wont run/swim/fly/crawl/dig/wobble/etc.
away when poked by a chop-stick. The scenery is - or at least up until very
recently, was – filled with clusters of flayed puppies, chopped up kittens,
bats waiting for their grim fate, snakes on sticks and the sorts. Whatever
takes your fancy, let it be scorpions or owls, Qingping market provides. Or so
I learned, it used to provide. With the SARS outbreak, certain measures had
been put into place –so the market today is somewhat tamer than a couple of years
back. I still wouldn’t call it tame though. Anything but tame actually…

I don’t actually know what is or isn’t sold
as food at the market nowadays, as I did not bump into the part where they sell
food per se. It might not even exist anymore – I couldn’t really find out, I’ll
have to go back and look around again. What I did find however is not, by any
means, less bewildering than the aforementioned gruesomeness. As anyone
enlightened enough should very well know, that fucked up things can be consumed
in various ways other than as culinary delicacies – we shall now venture into the
obscure depths of the traditional Chinese medicine – which is based on the rule
of thumb, that if something is too repulsive for even Chinese people to eat,
then it should be dried completely, and used as medicine.

I don’t even know how to say this… You can
get the dry remains of creatures that don’t even exist, or at least not to the
best knowledge of modern science they don’t. You can even get axolotl, an
animal that only lives in a certain cave in Mexico! As I was standing there
dazzled, trying to document the scene, I took a careless step without looking,
and something unthinkable gave a loud, nasty crack under my foot. At that
moment I had a really clear insight, what it must feel like when you know that
you’ve just stepped on a landmine. I slowly looked down, expecting the worst,
but it turned out to be only a nut. Phew, I got away this time, but let this be
a warning for everyone who dares to wander into the grittier parts of China –
mind your step! Anyone who goes to the market should not be fooled by the
handful of merchants around the edge, selling dried flowers as remedies. They
just want you to let your guard down, thinking – Why, how pretty flowers! Lets
see what’s over there… - and just like this, its done: your innocence taken,
your soul crushed, your dreams withered… what’s left is an empty shell,
incapable of seeing the light in the world anymore.

I can’t and I won’t attempt to give a
comprehensive list of the critters that can be found on display. Hell, half of
them I didn’t even recognize (it’s probably better this way)! Some of the ones
that I did recognize are: seahorses, starfish, giant millipedes, caterpillar
fungi, frogs, snails, hooves of something, sea cucumbers and turtles. My
personal favorites, I shit you not, were the flying lizards crucified on
sticks. Whether they are used as aphrodisiac or kites, I do not know…

As I said, I’m not aware of the fate of the
food selling parts of the market, but one possible answer is that they just
stopped selling their merchandise as food, and now they are selling it as pets
instead, as I did find a pet market at the spot, where according to the map the
original horror bazaar should have been.

What really surprised me - even more than
the unique merchandise itself – is that this little market district, that only
consists of a handful of streets and alleys, is wedged between heavy-duty
avenues, and glamorous shopping high-streets. It’s like a tiny island that
decided to stay in the 18th century, despite the constant bullying
of its rapidly developing surroundings. I managed to steal some little moments,
that really took me back a few hundred years – made me catch a bit of the taste
of how China might have been in a past era, that’s not so past after all. An
old man let me into his cottage where he was playing some kind of oriental domino
with his ancient friends, in front of the shrine of a guardian spirit – which I
was not allowed to take a picture of. Or there was the merchant who seemed to
be smoking something that can only be described as a didgeridoo, and was lazily
smiling at me through the heavy daze of whatever exotic substance was burning
inside. You can imagine that it came as a bit of a shock when close to him, I saw
a couple of kids playing on a brand new iPad… Talking about the clash of
cultures.

I’m confident that Guangzhou is swarming
with little gems like this one, and I’m prepared to go after them, however
unsettling they might prove to turn out. Luckily violent theft doesn’t seem to
be a typical free time occupation of the locals, so that’s one less thing to
worry about - since as a white guy with a big ass camera I attract a lot more
attention than I would prefer, this comes as a relief. That means that only my
short amount of free time can hold me back from digging up some more mysteries! I’m
already excited about the next surprise this place is holding for me!